The purpose of this thread is to track RMA experiences that people have with various stores / manufacturers.

 

To kick it off, I had 2 drives fail recently - one from WD and one from Seagate.  These were my first failures ever for in warranty drives.

 

2TB WD EADS.  Died during preclear.  I would rate WD as a 9 out of 10.  No request for proof of failure.  I was able to request a cross ship.  The replacement drive came in 2 days, and it was new, not a refurb.  Precleared and working great.  Was able to return the old drive in the shipping box.  Only negative was they did not cover shipping.  Maybe if I had complained they would have.

 

2TB Seagate LP.  Died a horrible death in the array.  I would rate Seagate a 6 of 10.  No request for proof of failure.  I was not able to request a cross ship.  Their instructions were extremely pernickedy about the shipping box and packing method, and without getting the replacement disk, had to scrounge around in my basement for 1/2 hour to find a box from a retail-purchased drive that met the requirements.  They also did not cover shipping.  I shipped this drive back about a week ago, and they received it and shipped it out UPS ground yesterday.  Will be about a 2 week turnaround on getting the replacement.  Not sure if it will be a refurb or not.

 

My experience with WD & Seagate is similar.

 

Wester Digital: I had a WD 640AAKS blue die on me, the RMA procedure was straight forward -  received replacement (new not refurb) within a week, working perfectly.

 

Seagate: Same drive as you (2Tb LP), was working as parity drive until it totally crapped out without warning. RMA; took about 10 days to get a replacement, it was a refurb and within 3 weeks has 2 bad sectors.

 

As far as ratings go I would probably agree with you on 9/10 for WD and 6/10 for seagate. Though I have to say I wouldn't buy another seagate 2TB LP again.

150GB Raptor - took well over a month to arrive and required numerous emails with customer service since they were a bit lost. Europe.

Western Digital US: WD 120GB BEVS Blue drive with bad sectors. Simply to follow process on their website. I opted for the Advanced RMA process that ships out the replacement drive to you first. There was no charge for this. It requires the use of a credit card for security purposes. I have to cover return shipping costs, which should be around $10 for UPS Ground. This process started today, 2011-02-19, so I'm still waiting.

 

In the past I had several RMAs with WD and they were always easy to do and were more times than not brand new drives. Overall very positive experiences.

 

Seagate US: A couple months back I had a 2TB 5900rpm drive fail during second preclear cycle of the day (3rd one overall). The drive would fail a SMART short test 40% of the way through it with read failure. Sort of a pain process to follow. They required entry of a failure code from their Seatools software so I had to connect it to the WinOS system then install and run their software. The software wouldn't even generate a code because it failed so early on in the SMART tests it tries to run. I had to search the Seagate site for what code to enter, ending up using something that mapped to "The drive is bad but the software won't generate a code, so trust me I know the drive is bad." I opted for the Advanced RMA process that ships out the replacement drive to you first. There was a $20 charge for this, but it includes the return shipping costs. It took about a week for the replacement drive to arrive via UPS Ground. It was a refurbished unit that checked out fine through 5 cycles of preclear. It would have been easier to RMA through NewEgg if it was within the 30 day window.

 

Acomdata US: External 1TB USB/ESata drive. The drive would not be recognized when plugged in. I contacted support through their website after filling in the details on the issue. Support contacted me via email shortly afterwards. They were very courteous and professional and offered to setup an RMA for me. They informed me that the problem could be in different areas which would present different options on how to proceed. The first choice is if the drive contains critical data -- they would replace the power brick and logic board in the enclosure if those were an issue. If the issue still persists they could ship that unit back to me so I could opt for external data recovery services. The second choice is if the drive does not contain critical data -- they would replace it with a new retail unit. I indicated it was ok to replacement the unit if need be. I had to cover shipment to them. They processed the unit in a day or two and shipped the new replacement out via UPS Ground. It was an extremely positive experience. They have my repeat business.

 

Overall, I always opt for the Advanced RMA process if it exists since that provides you with the proper packing materials to ship your drive to them. In some cases like Seagate it means paying a fee, but its a wash if I had to buy proper packing material for the return shipment and cover shipping.

 

I would rate WD and Acomdata equally up there as very positive experiences. I would rate Seagate middle of the road as well due to the hoop jumping with failure code entries and using refurb replacement drives.

500GB WD Green died 1 after 1 yr. Send mine back and received a WD Black 1 week later. Not the same but I guess it was an upgrade.

WD

 

living in Thailand i need to send my disk to Singapore to be RMA'd

but as above no issues

never asked me anything about the reason .. just fill out the form on the website

pack the thing and send

within 3 days of receiving the bad drive they have the new drive at my door ...

 

the cross shipping is not allowed in Asia which is pity ... but overall can not complain

 

so far rma'd

 

1 1TB EADS with nearly 3 years of heavy use -> got refurbished EADS

1 500 GB AAKS with also 3 years of heavy use and which flew trough the living room by accident (partially my fault by leaving a power cord hang from my desk .. and my wife hooked it with something and the thing flew across the living room and didn't work any more ) anyway got a new 500 gb

1 1TB EARS with months of use and a lot of headaches and got a brand new one EARS

1 laptop drive can't remember what any more  -> got new one

 

now when i have a bad disk i tend to look at the website and see how long i can wait to replace it .. if i get a second one in that time then i send them together which saves in postal costs as sending i have to pay ...

but overall pretty pleased with the service ...

 

In recent years my RMA experiences have been absolutely trouble and hassle free. Which makes me very very worried.

 

I remember a couple of years back, what a teeth pulling exercise it was to get a hard drive RMAed. You had to download their diagnostics tools and go through with the tech a whole list of troubleshooting questions, even if the darn thing was dead a Norwegian Blue. And you had to convince them that it had expired of natural causes.

 

Now, they don't even try to trouble shoot, all they seem to be interested in is that it is still under warranty. I shudder to think of the volume of RMAs they are facing, such that they would stream line the process this much.

Anyone have any experiences with Hitachi or Samsung?

I have done one Samsung drive and it went well.  I can't remember much about it actually so there must not have been any problems with the process.

 

I do remember that I got a "rectified" drive back which was a little disappointing.

I've got 4 750GB F1's out on RMA received by Samsung 1/26. Should receive the replacements tomorrow. I'll update whether they are refurb or new. No cross shipping and no proof of failure required.

 

Edit: received the drives yesterday (I wasn't available Monday to sign for the package so it got delayed a day). They sent me back 4 750GB F1s that look brand new. No indication they are refurb'd. Started pre-clearning them all last night and so far no errors. Entire process, from the time I requested the RMA to the time I received the replacements, was about 1 month.

Anyone with a recent Hitachi RMA?

Anyone with a recent Hitachi RMA?

I'd be interested in this as well, because that's all I'm using right now.  A lack of response shouldn't indicate a 0% fail rate in the wild, as much as I would like that to be true. 

Anyone with a recent Hitachi RMA?

I'd be interested in this as well, because that's all I'm using right now.  A lack of response shouldn't indicate a 0% fail rate in the wild, as much as I would like that to be true. 

I've got 6 Hitachi drives in my two servers.  Two of them are the original 500 Gig IDE drives I started with, the others are 2TB SATA. Never had any problem with any of them, so no RMA experience.

 

Those original 500Gig drives have over 45000 hours on them and are still going strong with no re-allocated sectors.  (I know, I should replace them, but it is less expensive to add a new SATA drive to the new server, and the old server is largely IDE drives.  Besides, they show no signs of wear.)

 

Perhaps the lack of a response might be a combination of a smaller number of Hitachi drives in use, AND a low failure rate.

 

Joe L.

I had to RMA a new 5k3000 Hitachi that would cause lots of errors on my server. They don't have advanced RMA like WD so you have to ship them your drive first. They seem pretty particular about packing the drive, and once they received it, it took another 4-5 days before they emailed me saying they had received the drive and was sending out a repacement. It then took another 4-5 days for it to arrive at my house. They used the local UPS logistics center so my shipping cost wasn't very high.

 

All around turnaround was 2 weeks.

 

With WD I've always used the advance RMA option as I then have a box that I can use to send back the old drive in. Typically its about a week to receive the new drive once I fill out the online RMA req forms. This does req you to provide a CC though and a hold for the cost of the new drive is applied until they receive your old drive.

In Philippines:

 

A Samsung HD502HJ failed after about a month's use - drive was totally inaccessible.  I returned it to the shop of purchase.  The shop connected it up and verified the failure.  Because it was more than one week since sale, their policy was to return the drive to Samsung before they could provide a replacement (less than one week and they would have replaced it directly).  After a couple of weeks they called to say that I could collect a brand new replacement.

I sent in my 1.5TB Samsung drive today since bad sectors were growing, and I was having read errors for several files that were likely stored on bad sectors. Luckily, I had the packaging from that drive purchased back in August. I've read that Samsung takes up to a month to return the drive, so I ordered a new Samsung F4 drive to add to the array in the mean time. I shipped the drive off to another company, but I can't remember the name. I'll look it up if anyone is interested.

My experience with my most recent RMA:

 

Ordered 2 WD-EARS 2TB from NewEgg.  Started a preclear with 3 cycles.  Had to stop the preclear and then start it up again.  Drives made first cycle but died after that - both of the drives.

 

RMA'd them to NewEgg.  Got the replacement drives from NewEgg.  Put them into two different boxes.  Bios would recognize them both but unRAID and Windows would only recognize one.  So RMA'd the bad RMA'd drive to NewEgg again.  Meanwhile tried to prelear the second RMA'd drive.  That drive wouldn't complete a single cycle couldn't write to the MBR.  So RMA'd the second RMA'd drive to NewEgg.  Both of those RMA's cost the same for a single drive that I originally paid for TWO drives on the first RMA.

 

When I got the 2nd RMA iteration of drives one of those drives was recognized by the BIOS but not by the OS.  The other wasn't recognized at all.  So gave up on NewEgg and RMA'd them to WD.  At HALF the shipping cost I might add.  Got 1 refurbished and 1 new drive both have now completed a 3 cycle preclear and are in the server now.

 

Very disappointed with NewEgg.  For all I knew I was just getting the same drive back from them that I sent them.  The anti static bags were generic so it was a possibility.  I had not recorded the serials so I have no proof that it was happening.  Been ordering from Amazon for my drives past two weeks.  So far so good - no bad drives if the current preclear cycles finish good this weekend.

^^ How did AZ package your drive in the shipping box? There's a pic on the AZ page that has it suspended between two plastic holders. Is yours like this?

^^ How did AZ package your drive in the shipping box? There's a pic on the AZ page that has it suspended between two plastic holders. Is yours like this?

The drives I ordered from AZ were mixed.  One WD EARS - I believe it was packaged as you described.  2 Hitachi 7200 in retail packaging.  1 Hitachi 5400 in a OEM brown box but NOT like you described.  All of those were then put into one bigger box with bubble wrap arround the individual boxes if I remember correctly.

The drives I ordered from AZ were mixed.  One WD EARS - I believe it was packaged as you described.  2 Hitachi 7200 in retail packaging.  1 Hitachi 5400 in a OEM brown box but NOT like you described.  All of those were then put into one bigger box with bubble wrap arround the individual boxes if I remember correctly.

 

I'm worried about them just throwing a single bare drive in a box with a few air pillows, then the drive bouncing all over the place. Amazon is one of the worst shippers I've ever encountered when it comes to properly packing boxes for shipment.

The drives I ordered from AZ were mixed.  One WD EARS - I believe it was packaged as you described.  2 Hitachi 7200 in retail packaging.  1 Hitachi 5400 in a OEM brown box but NOT like you described.  All of those were then put into one bigger box with bubble wrap arround the individual boxes if I remember correctly.

 

I'm worried about them just throwing a single bare drive in a box with a few air pillows, then the drive bouncing all over the place. Amazon is one of the worst shippers I've ever encountered when it comes to properly packing boxes for shipment.

I'll watch that.  I was mostly p***ed off at NewEggs RMA problems.  I have ordered other things since then from NewEgg without problems.  May still boycot them for HardDrives however.  I would have went WD in the first place but these were NEW drives and I wanted a NEW drive.  After this experience I my just go refurb'ed and skip the hassle because I've never had to go through more than a single cycle when dealing with the manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Maxtor to name the companies that I have RMA'd drives to).

FWIW, you should always do the Newegg chat when sending anything back that's defective, as they'll always provide a prepaid return label.

Have RMA'd two samsung drives in the last 2 years, both for reallocated sectors,  returned both no questions and had a brand new drive by return post in 2 days.  (UK)

^^ Yup. Just did that this morning. Voided my $11 order (!) for a label last night and sent me a new one.

Anyone with a recent Hitachi RMA?

 

Lets hope not   I got (6) 160GB & (2) 320GB drives that are still working nice with MANY hours on them (used in desktop hardware with server OS for enterprise app products). Also have (1) 2TB 7200k & (3) 2TB greenies 4 preclears each, on everyday and just testing a large unRAID build on them for now, god bless they seem fine as well.